“I DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT THE F*** ANTI SEMETIC MEANS ITS JUST SOME BULL**** JEWISH PEOPLE MADE UP TO PROTECT THEIR BULL****…”
“I CAN SAY JEW AS MUCH AS I WANT I CAN SAY HITLER AS MUCH AS I WANT MATTER FACT I DO SAY IT WHEN I WANT”
“…ANY JEWISH PERSON THAT DOES BUSINESS WITH ME NEEDS TO KNOW I DONT LIKE OR TRUST ANY JEWISH PERSON AND THIS IS COMPLETELY SOBER…”
“…IF YOU THINK YOU GETTING MONEY WITH A WITH A WHITE PERSON ITS NOT TRUE THAT SO CALLED WHITE PERSON IS ACTUALLY JEWISH…”
“ELON STOLE MY NAZI SWAG AT THE INAUGURATION YOOOO MY GUY GET YOUR OWN THIRD RALE”
Everything that you just read is a direct quote from Kanye West’s X account, posted on Feb. 7.
Notice the date. Feb. 7. That is about 79 years and seven months after the end of the Holocaust.
Now, many of us know that antisemitism did not end after the Holocaust, and certainly does not end when a man now part of our American government made a Nazi salute during his speech at the president’s inauguration. The same is true when one of the most popular rappers of our current musical history makes unabashedly bigoted statements on a public forum.
West currently has 66.4 million listeners on Spotify. I know that not all of these people agree with his statements on X because I know people who listen to his music. They are not bad people. They enjoy his music for the way it sounds or the way it makes them feel. and not because it has anything to do with his moral standing. This being said, there comes a point when we have to decide if it is morally right to separate the music from the artist and how much of continuing to listen to their music is blissful ignorance.
Choosing to ignore outrageous claims that hurt innocent people is not acceptable. Listening to his music directly supports him financially. By extension, it also supports his ability to influence a huge number of people, to make antisemitic claims on a public forum with great reach and to hurt good people.
I am not telling you to stop listening to all of his music. For many, that is an important and loved thing to give up. I am asking you to think about it. Do not ignore when one of your favorite artists says wildly inappropriate things that you know you cannot agree with. Remember the implications of the music you listen to, who it supports and who it hurts.
To connect this on a larger scale, when traumatizing events happen, and we are told the unimaginable statistics of the injured, the suffering or the dead, we can become unintentionally desensitized to it. It’s easier to look at suffering as a number and not as kids, brothers, sisters, parents, loved ones and people. As difficult as it can be to process the sheer number of Jews killed in the Holocaust – over 6 million – this number is nowhere near the amount of people who have suffered due to antisemitism. Who suffered because their families were categorized based on something that they believed to be a beautiful religious or cultural identity.
We do not have a number for how many posts target Jewish people every day on social media. We do not have a number for how many flagrant antisemitic comments are made, even without knowledge, daily. The utter scope of antisemitism in our world is so vast that we do not have statistics to measure it.
What we do have is ourselves. We have hope that there is inherent and blazing humanity stronger than the numbers we can’t see. We have eyes to see wrong and we have mouths to make it known, and we are accountable for the knowledge that we have and the power we possess to change things. Do not stay silent. For the people you love and for the people who love you, speak up.
